Almost mechanically I followed up the winding stairs, so often pressed by the feet now mouldering side by side beneath the dark coffin lid, into the room where my now degraded parent gave form and coloring to the dreams of imagination, or the shadows of memory. The walls were arching, and lighted from above. Mr. Brahan had converted it into a library, and it was literally lined with books on every side but one. Suspended on that, in a massy gilt frame, was a sketch which arrested my gaze, and it had no power to wander. The head alone was finished,--but such a head! I recognized at once my mother's features; not as I had seen them faded by sorrow, but in the soft radiance of love and happiness. They did not wear the rosy brightness of the miniature I had seen in my father's hand, which was probably taken immediately after her marriage. This picture represented her as my imagination pictured her after my birth, when the tender anxieties of the mother softened and subdued the splendor of her girlish beauty; those eyes,--those unforgotten eyes, with their long, curling lashes, and expression of heavenly sweetness,--how they seemed to bend on me,--the child she had so much loved! I longed to kneel before it, to appeal to it, by every holy and endearing epithet,--to reach the cold, unconscious canvas, and cover it with my kisses and my tears. But I could only gaze and gaze, and the strong spell that bound me was mistaken for the ecstasy of admiration, such as genius only can awaken. "There is a wonderful resemblance," said Mr. Brahan, breaking the silence. "I shall feel great pride henceforth in saying, I have an admirable likeness of Mrs. Linwood." "I ought to feel greatly flattered," I answered with a quick drawn breath; "it certainly is very lovely." "It has the loveliest expression I ever saw in woman's countenance," observed Mr. Brahan. "Perhaps, after making such a remark, I ought not to say, that in that chiefly lies its resemblance to yourself, but it is emphatically so." "She must be too much accustomed to compliments to mind yours, my dear," said Mrs. Brahan. "I think Mrs. Linwood has the advantage of the picture, for she has the bloom and light of life. No painting can supply these." "There is something in the perfect repose of a picture," said I, withdrawing my eyes from my mother's seraphic countenance; "something in its serene, unchanging beauty, that is a type of immortality, of the divine rest of the soul. Life is restless, and grows tremulous as we gaze." "O that that picture were mine!" I unconsciously uttered, as I turned to take a last look on leaving the apartment. "I do not know that it is mine to give," said Mr. Brahan, "as I found it here after purchasing the house. The one below was presented me by St. James himself. If, however, you will allow me to send it to Mr. Linwood, I really think he has the best right to it, on account of its remarkable resemblance to yourself."